Jassim the Leader: Founder of Qatar

by Mohamed Althani

  Whether or not the Ottomans detected any hint of sarcasm in Muhammad bin Khalifa’s absurd request, they welcomed the letter as a means of asserting their own authority in Arabia, a region lost to them two centuries previously. The Turkish governor-general in Baghdad took on the role of mediator, requesting that the British ambassador in Istanbul explain why Her Majesty’s navy had bombarded Dammam when they knew it was ‘part of the hereditary dominions of the Sultan’. The ambassador’s response was blunt.

  Although it may not be denied that, since the Egyptian invasion of Najd in 1840, Amir Faisal has remained tributary to the Turkish authorities of Mecca, his tribute being regarded probably as an offering to the head of the religion, it is certain that the Porte has never exercised any jurisdiction, or attempted to extend its authority over the country . … In point of fact, the Porte has not the power to punish or coerce its tributary; not a single Turkish functionary exists in the country.

  It added cheekily that it would be extremely prejudicial to the whole region if that policy were to change.

  Endeavouring to keep Ottomans as far from eastern Arabia as possible, the British government in India felt an invigorating sense of urgency to resolve the Saudi–Bahrain dispute. They turned to Captain Herbert Frederick Disbrowe for a solution. To his credit, the officer did research the problem thoroughly and reported that ‘non receipt of zakah, or religious tithe, for a considerable period is the main source of irritation to the Wahhabi Emir’. With the confidence of a man asked to state the obvious, Disbrowe informed his superiors that should the Sheikh of Bahrain disburse ‘his contribution with regularity, Faisal would be willing to come to terms of peace and would cheerfully do his utmost to restrain his subjects and protégés from molesting Shaikh Muhammad bin Khalifa’s dependents and from forming combinations inimical to the security of Bahrain’. In short, the tribute had to be paid and Disbrowe would have to collect it. By May 1862, the captain had twisted the necessary arms and packed off 4,000 German crowns to Najd, on the understanding that Faisal would forgo the arrears.

  Freed from one problem, Muhammad bin Khalifa gaily involved himself in another. His attentions in April 1863 focused on Qatar’s eastern coast. Muhammad sought to provoke a dispute and arranged for the Sheikh of Wakra, Muhammad bin Said Al bu Kuwara, to be brought to Bahrain in chains. Muhammad bin Said was originally a Bahraini vassal but had fled to the Persian coast to escape Muhammad bin Khalifa’s employ in 1851. He had returned, after British intercession, eight years later. (Muhammad bin Khalifa also exiled from Wakra a number of others whom he deemed to be ‘divers in debt, and disreputable characters used to collect and injure trade or disturb the peace’.) Explaining his decision to imprison Wakra’s chief to the British agent at Bahrain, Muhammad claimed his prisoner ‘had always some secret correspondence with Emir Faisal and also used to give asylum to everyone who committed any fault or misdemeanour at sea’. The British accepted the explanation, though the agent himself, Hajji Ahmad, observed that Bahrain had virtually decimated the settlement of Wakra. Thus, even though Britain had endorsed Muhammd bin Said’s arrest in November 1863, their patience with Muhammad bin Khalifa was now paper thin. It must have seemed to London that the Bahraini protectorate was paying tribute to the Wahhabi state.

  Colonel Lewis Pelly, one of the more famous and enduring Political Residents, had initially supported Bahrain’s tribute payments in return for peace. The arrangement continued until Faisal was on his deathbed in 1865. But with an expected change of leadership in the Najd, Pelly wanted to make clear that the British protectorate of Bahrain was not subordinate to the Wahhabi state. Unveiling a formula that would maintain payment of tribute but save European face, Pelly decided Bahrain was in fact paying on behalf of its possessions in Qatar and not for itself. This change of interpretation fitted the bill as far as the British were concerned but spelt trouble in the peninsula’s east. Bahraini influence had been expunged from the main centres of Bida, Doha and Fuwairit, and was only meaningful among the Naim tribe. Nevertheless, Britain was suggesting that Qatar pay money to Bahrain, which in turn would be passed on to the Najd, even though, as far as Jassim was concerned, Doha already came directly under Wahhabi protection. In one of Sheikh Faisal’s last letters, the 80-year old leader insisted that God had given him all the lands of Arabia from ‘Kuwait round to Ras al-Hud’, necessarily including Bahrain, Qatar and Muscat. The Wahhabi Emir thus laid claim to all of Bahrain and Qatar equally. The Resident dismissed his letter as mere ‘pretension’. As the historian Rosemarie Zahlan noted in her book The Creation of Qatar, however, the British quietly dropped Pelly’s formula when it came up for review in 1880.

  The Political Resident had convinced Bombay of his idea by March 1867 and the Governor-General’s Council decreed that Bahrain was independent of Abdullah bin Faisal’s Wahhabi state and ‘owed allegiance to no other power’. Qatar could expect, sooner rather than later, that British ships would call to collect for unrendered, and unrenderable, Bahraini services. Sure enough, the Resident had estimated that since the total annual Wahhabi claim on both Bahrain and Qatar had been 20,000 krans, or 4,000 German crowns, Qatar should now pay 9,000 krans to Bahrain. Sheikh Muhammad would then pass this amount on to Najd. To make matters worse, Pelly also stipulated that Sheikh Ali bin Khalifa would collect only 5,000 of these krans, as the remainder had to be paid to the Khalifa-supporting Naim chief Rashid bin Jabir. Muhammad bin Thani’s confidence in the British must have been shaken; he flatly refused to pay Rashid even one kran. Was he really being asked to believe that, once tribute was passed into the hands of these two, the money would be amalgamated and transferred to Abdullah bin Faisal in Riyadh?

  The proposal was a recipe for disaster, though it didn’t come in the form of a Qatari uprising but rather a squabble between the Al Khalifa and the Naim. They argued over the latter’s share of the tribute when only 5,000 krans had been paid, rather than 9,000. In June 1867, Sheikh Ahmad bin Muhammad Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s representative in Qatar since 1863, arrested Ali bin Thamir of the Naim, imprisoning him in Wakra. Sheikh Muhammad bin Thani, who had actually married one his daughters to Sheikh Ahmad, abandoned his tribal loyalties and called on his son-in-law to release the Naim chief in Wakra. But it was Jassim who took control of the situation, escalating the whole affair to the level of an international incident.

  As soon as Ali bin Thamir was arrested, his clansmen made for Bida and pleaded with Jassim to free their leader from Khalifa injustice. Honoured that they should come to him, Jassim promised Ali would be freed that very same day, prayed in Doha at noon and was at the gates of Wakra’s fort three hours later. Ahmad bin Muhammad had no desire to meet up with his brother-in-law and fled to take ship from Khor Hasan as soon as Al Thani lances glistened on the horizon. Jassim personally broke Ali out of his cell; his prestige in Qatar was at an all-time high. Demonstrating extreme indifference to Al Khalifa sensitivities, he was also aware that Bahrain’s treaty with Britain expressly precluded Sheikh Muhammad from conducting maritime warfare. He was soon to discover how poorly he understood Muhammad bin Khalifa.

  Once the Bahraini agent in Wakra had personally informed the sheikh of Bahrain as to events, the sheikh surprised many by publicly expressing his desire for a new, enduring peace with Qatar. In a letter to Muhammad bin Thani, the Bahraini sheikh made a particular point of asking that it be Jassim himself who come to Bahrain to negotiate a permanent peace. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems obvious that Jassim would be either arrested or killed as soon as he turned up in Muharraq, but turn up he did and arrested he was. What conditions must have been like in a Bahraini jail can only be surmised from an inaccurate British report dated 27 November 1867 informing Her Britannic Majesty’s Political Resident that Jassim ‘has either been murdered, or has committed suicide’.

  Prisoner and poet

  Born and raised in Ottoman Syria before emigrating to the United States, Maronite Christian and Princeton professor Philip Hitti described in his 1937 book History
of the Arabs what poetry means to tens of millions of people in the Middle East.

  No people in the world manifest such enthusiastic admiration for literary expression and are so moved by the word, spoken or written, as the Arabs. Modern audiences in Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo can be stirred to the highest degree by the recital of poems, only vaguely comprehended, and by the delivery of orations in the classical tongue, though it be only partially understood. The rhythm, the rhyme, the music, produce on them the effect of what they call ‘lawful magic’.

  But until you go to a recital of Mutanabbi’s poetry in Iraq and have felt the raw emotion of the audience, even Hitti’s description may not suffice. I am not about to compare Jassim to the great tenth-century Iraqi poet Abu Tayyib Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Mutanabbi, but they both observed the same rules of versification.

  In Arabic poetry, rhymed verse falls strictly into one of sixteen different metres, known in Arabic as buhur, or seas. It was only in the twentieth century that modern poets regularly dared break with tradition and create their own, unrestricted rhythms. But in Jassim’s time, the rules were rigorous and had been for over a thousand years. Every line, or bayt, had to use the same measure and end in the same rhyme. Only the talented could express themselves while obeying such strict rules. Thus, like anything worthwhile, the skill of composing poetry could take an age to hone. But time is what Jassim now had, an entire year in fact. Not that he was inspired only in Bahrain; some of his qasidas were to come much later on, during his semi-retirement at the beginning of the twentieth century. I’ll ask your indulgence, however, as I attempt to translate a few abyaat into English verse, and hope that you’ll keep in mind that poetry, like a good joke, rarely translates well.

  In his life, Jassim composed nine qasidas (some claim twelve), each averaging around thirty lines. An authoritative publication of his collected works, his diwan, was printed in India in 1910, three years before his death. That they were collected at all highlights their popularity, as poems were rarely written in a mostly illiterate society and might have to go 40 years before being recorded. Poems were generally committed to memory, and so had to be memorable. This was made ‘easier’ when Jassim chose religious themes that drew on well-known Quranic allusions or references to the Prophetic traditions, known as the Hadith. Jassim varied his style considerably, sometimes writing in a more obvious dialect, other times writing in the High Arabic understood throughout the Arab world. The following six fragments betray a personal and emotional side to Jassim that is seldom seen in history textbooks. One qasida, too long to translate here, describes a love for a beautiful girl a young hero longs to make his bride. Would that we might know her name! Unfortunately, names of countless men and women in Arab history are veiled through the popular use of teknonyms and patronyms, the ‘Abu’ and ‘Bin’ of so many historical and contemporary characters.

  We have already met one fragment of Jassim’s poetry:

  I lifted injustice for no personal gain

  but to see the weaker freed again.

  This might very well refer, in part, to the incident that had brought him to his current predicament. The Naim tribe were to cause the Al Thani grief for many years to come. Indeed, Jassim’s son, Abdullah, would still be putting down their rebellions as late as 1937. Nevertheless, when the Naim had begged for his help in freeing their leader in Wakra, Jassim had sworn to effect his release and made good on his promise. He had set aside his own tribal rivalry, and even consideration for Qatar’s ties with Bahrain, though the price would be dear. The whole of Doha would have to pay; Jassim’s imprisonment was not enough to satisfy Muhammad bin Khalifa, as we shall see. But in the meantime, Jassim had all sorts of concerns, and his poems are very clear.

  How many a servant whom God doth cherish

  is tried, unjustly in jail to perish

  I see my eyelids tempt a slumber but fail,

  my sorrows cannot be numbered.

  Jassim attached no blame to his father for sending him to Bahrain. In one verse, he describes how his father is like ‘the sun’s great light that dims the stars’ and also heaps praise on his own son, Ali, to whom he gave the nickname Jaw’aan. But not all of his poetry is so romantic in style, and he has no compunction about making clear exactly what he thought of Bahrain and its British protectorate status. The following two extracts don’t beat about the bush and presumably relate to the British.

  Upon us now idolators, soldiers of disbelief,

  come with all their scum and guns, misery and grief

  Pagan worshippers, men who misguide,

  who pray for statues to provide

  (By statues, he means the little crosses some Christians keep that depict a man crucified.) Finally, in this brief taster of Sheikh Jassim’s poetry, I’ll leave you with his opinion of Muhammad bin Khalifa, and his company, who had chosen to accept British rather than Wahhabi or Ottoman protection.

  No judge objects, no scholars ponder,

  as the kafir flag’s pulled high

  Following with love and laughter,

  their brothers pushed aside

  Destroyed but ascendant

  While Jassim was in jail, Muhammad bin Khalifa dispatched large numbers of ships and men, under the command of his brother, Sheikh Ali bin Khalifa, and Ahmad bin Muhammad, to attack the people of Wakra, Bida and Doha. This was an action clearly proscribed in his 1861 treaty with Britain. Nevertheless, the task force was soon joined by ships from Abu Dhabi under the command of Zayid bin Khalifa. He had joined the foray so as to wipe out ‘a Wahhabi ally’ and a ‘popular asylum for fugitives’, meaning the pearl hunters who had fled debt and family to start anew. Thus it was that in October 1867 the combined forces of Qatar’s eastern and western neighbours sacked Bida and Doha ‘with circumstances of peculiar barbarity’. One British official wrote years later that ‘the damage inflicted on the people of Qatar was estimated at around fifty thousand pounds’. Sheikh Muhammad bin Thani would most certainly have been killed, were it not for Zayid bin Khalifa’s men spotting him during the onslaught, extracting from him a promise to pay over one hundred thousand krans (approximately five hundred pounds) and permitting his escape to Wakra.

  Muhammad appealed to Abdullah bin Faisal for retribution, but the Wahhabi state was drifting into civil war. Though his brother, Saud, was pushing for control of the Najd and Hasa, Abdullah did take up the Qatari cause, threatening the Al Khalifa ‘with hostilities if the booty were not returned, and the inhabitants restored to their homes’. His threat, however, no longer intimidated Bahrain. Disappointed and angry, Muhammad bin Thani and his peers took matters into their own hands and prepared for a retaliatory attack on Bahrain in June 1868. The butcher’s bill was high – 60 ships sunk and 1,000 men killed. Neither side could speak of victory, though Bida did succeed in taking a number of Bahraini notables captive. This result saved Jassim’s life, since Muhammad bin Khalifa proposed a prisoner exchange and Muhammad bin Thani’s son returned home.

  With few ships and even less coal, the government in India had been ineffectual at maintaining maritime peace in the Gulf for over twelve months. Their agreements and authority had been flouted publicly. Pelly was determined to restore British order and ordered HMS Clyde, Hugh Rose and Sind to punish all offenders, but most especially Muhammad bin Khalifa. He had already fled to Khor Hasan on Qatar’s north coast and applied to the Naim for protection.

  By 1 September, Pelly had arrived off Wakra, where the who’s who of Qatar came on board to confess their breaches of the maritime truce. All freely admitted their part in attacking Bahrain, but insisted that the looting and destruction of Doha and Bida had required an urgent response. All on board expressed their willingness to sign any document which might secure the general peace and lead to the capture of Muhammad bin Khalifa, who ‘during a quarter of a century, was increasingly become the terror of his neighbours’. Five days later, Pelly was at Bahrain demanding the apprehension of Muhammad bin Khalifa, confiscating his ships and extracting repara
tions for the outrageous events of the previous year. The Resident officially installed Muhammad’s brother Ali in the sheikhdom, and promptly imposed on him a fine of 1,000,000 German crowns, one fifth of which was to be paid to Doha in compensation.

  The proverb says it is the darkest hour which precedes the dawn. Doha had withstood its darkest year. But now, HMS Vigilant dropped anchor off Wakra with a document for Muhammad bin Thani. It began: ‘I, Muhammad bin Thani, of Qatar, do hereby solemnly bind myself, in the presence of the Lord, to carry into effect the undermentioned terms agreed upon between me and Lieutenant-Colonel Pelly, Her Britannic Majesty’s Political Resident, Persian Gulf’. The introduction alone was an implicit British admission that Qatar was an independent nation led by the Al Thani, and the following five points were all acceptable. It required that Muhammad return from Wakra to his home in Doha; that Qatari ships would not put to sea with hostile intent without consulting the British first; that Qatar would neither aid nor protect Muhammad bin Khalifa, but rather hand him over to the Resident; and lastly that Muhammad was to promote all that would bring peace between Qatar and Bahrain.

  And in addition to a seven-gun naval salute for Muhammad bin Thani in front of all the peoples gathered on the shore at Wakra, Pelly issued a second letter to the leading tribal chiefs of the peninsula, informing them of Muhammad bin Thani’s recognised status.

  Be it known to all the Shaikhs and others on the Qatar Coast that Muhammad bin Thani, of Qatar, is returning with his tribe to reside at his town of Doha and has bound himself to live peaceably there and not to molest any of his neighbouring tribes. It is therefore expected that all the shaikhs and tribes of Qatar should not molest him or his tribesmen. If anyone is found acting otherwise, or in any way breaking the peace at sea, he will be treated in the same manner as Shaikh Muhammad bin Khalifa of Bahrain has been.